A lot of readers have asked for the inside dope on legendary columnist Brock "fuck the double-nickel" Yates' disappearance from TTAC. And I'm not going to tell you. But I gotta say I was really looking forward to posting Peter DeLorenzo's weekly rants on this website. But when I gave TTAC's Best and Brightest (B&B) the heads up, the self-styled Autoextremist took umbrage at my characterization of our, uh, arrangement as an, um, "arrangement." He was especially not happy with my suggestion that he could or would respond to the B&B's comments to his work. So I modified the post to reflect Peter's understanding of our, uh, thingie. Once again, Sweet Pete was sweet. And then, despite his contention that he didn't have time to read comments, he read the comments. Once again, Peter felt TTAC was usurping his brand. He directed me to itaintgonnahappen.com and asked me to tell you that "Autoextremist.com is an independent entity and it will remain that way as long as we're doing it, so I am officially withdrawing permission for you to run my 'Rants' column or any other Autoextremist content on TTAC." And so I have. Shame.

As we reported last week, this is not a good time to be making pickups. At all. As we predicted ever since the new Toyota Tundra got into the game, the incentives wars on pickup trucks are getting bloody. Automotive News [sub] brings us the tale of a Folsom Lake Dodge store selling a Dodge Ram 1500 Quad Cab SLT 4×2 for $19,995. That's $12,800 off the $32,795 sticker price. At Swift Dodge, also in Sacramento, desperate dealers are offering $13k discounts on the same model. And still the trucks sit. Or, more precisely, pile-up. Dodge has a 109-day average supply of Rams. (The word on the street is that Chrysler has more Rams to ship and no one willing to take them.) Could it get any worse? You betcha. The pickup market cratered by 21 percent in April; well below the -16.6 percent year-to-date total. And now, the new Ram is set to appear, with the new Ford F-150 hot on its tailgate. To clear the deck, Chrysler will have to reach even deeper into its threadbare pockets for even greater discounts on the old trucks. Will they even sell then? One things for sure: there's precious little milk left in the Dodge Boys' cash cow. Without a plan B in the wings, Chrysler is headed straight for plan C11.

The obvious answer is not. But MAN did the beleaguered American automaker get bent out of shape when analysts did the math on Daimler's financial report and reckoned Chrysler dropped $2.7b in Q4. Chrysler told TTAC (and the world) that they had "positive operational earnings," and confirmed (to us) that they meant honest-to-God profits. As we pointed out, that kinda conflicted with Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli's previous statement. The ChryCo jeffe admitted that Chrysler was "operationally bankrupt" (which also triggered a PR offensive in all senses of the word). And now we read in The Detroit News that Bob Nardelli addressed cash flow in his usual "we're privately held so we can move fast and not have to pander to stockholders with 'the collective attention span of kindergarteners.'" "Yes, We don't have to worry about over-reaction in the market," Nardelli told Daniel Howes. "We are still on track to deliver a positive cash flow. We are not there yet." So what exactly does "positive operational earnings" mean, then? You know, other than something a lot less than the truth. 

Back when I started this site, I decided not to register every "The Truth About" url in the urlniverse. Although I am prone to bouts of megalomania (usually restricted to violent videogames), I knew there was no way I could muster enough energy/focus/moola to effectively run an empire of "truth abouts." I also knew that truth-telling is an inherently difficult and risky business that requires complete commitment. So when Ford launched thetruthabouttrucks.com, it was no biggie. As soon as visitors see it's a Ford site, they know exactly how much objective (i.e. truthy) information they'd discovered. When Audi launched "truth in engineering" as their ad strapline, again, it wasn't a problem. About the most controversial thing about Audi's engineering is how to spell Vorschprung Durch Technik. Thetruthabouttoyota.com's kvetching about ToMoCo's greenwashing was/is more like it. But not quite. And so, now, I'm thinking the new UK website thetruthaboutsmart ain't gonna cut it. Yes, it's a cleverly-written, well-produced website that does an excellent job dispelling common misconceptions (not "rumors" Autoblog) about the under-capitalized fortwo. But net savvy folk know the difference between corporate and independent info. There are a few members of the automotive press corps (e.g. Dan Neil), and a few websites (e.g. Motor Authority) whose truth levels I respect. Which simply proves you don't have to say you're going to tell the truth to do it. But it can't hurt, can it?

Settle down people. Autoextremist Peter DeLorenzo isn't creating original content for TTAC. The no-holds-barred Motown pundit has agreed to double post (DP?) on his recently redesigned website and the soon-to-be-redesigned TTAC. DeLorenzo's latest rant will go live on AE and TTAC every Wednesday morning. As TTAC's Best and Brightest surely realize, this arrangement provides our readers with a unique opportunity to bat around DeLorenzo's combative ideas in a forum-like thingie. To get the ball rolling, I submit the following podcast. I apologize for the abrupt intro (guess the subject). My high-tech digital recorder suffered a loose connection; Frank had to lop off the first minute or so. And the levels are over the place. Still, it's worth it. Welcome to Sweet Pete! 

I know it's a small point, but it's worth making. Of course, first you gotta party like its 1999! Automotive News [sub] follows the Tesla-friendly PR template, kicking-off their coverage by putting the Silicon start-up's failure to deliver ONE customer car into its improper context. "Close to the crawling 405 freeway and the congested corner of Santa Monica and Sepulveda boulevards, the Tesla factory store makes a potent statement for gridlocked Angelenos to buy an electric car. Of course, Tesla needs to get its two-seat roadster into serial production to give its dealership something to sell. The company has 600 sold orders and a waiting list for 400 more, but only four production cars have been built. A development glitch with the Magna two-speed transmission has forced a rapid redesign of a one-speed transmission in collaboration with Ricardo UK Ltd." Not so rapid, Mr. Bond. But that's OK. Ish. "By December, Tesla hopes to have 300 cars built. At that time, serial production of 150 cars a month should begin, said Darryl Siry, Tesla vice president of sales, marketing and service." [emphasis added]. Meanwhile, you want to hear something funny, in a "we're not entirely drunk on Tesla Kool-Aid" kind of way? "The sales staff is salaried," Mark Rechtin reports. "Not commissioned."

Ford CEO Alan Mulally's turnaround plan might not be able to overcome the weight of history, but these guys sure seem to have a handle on, gulp, reality. To wit: FoMoCo analyst George Pippas' [above] acknowledgment of the American consumer's shift away from pickup trucks. Pippas' remarks come via BusinessWeek, which reports that April light truck sales (pickups, minivans, SUVs and crossovers) dropped by 17.4 percent across the board. That's compared to an overall passenger car increase of 4.5 percent. And a total new vehicle sales decrease of 7.8 percent, to 4,819,709 units. So, what does GM make of the pickup truck cash cow barbecue? "We certainly think the pickup truck market will bounce [back], but it's hard to say how quickly and how high that will go," pronounced Marketing Maven Mark LaNeve. Chrysler? "We don't see this market as a sea change against pickup trucks," spokesmouth Stuart Schorr said. "But it is a challenge. That's why we're developing hybrids, for instance. But Americans will continue to want pickup trucks." Toyota used PR-speak to split the difference between realism and delusion. ""Consumers are delaying their purchases now," admits ToMoCo GM Bob Carter. "But it's going to recover in the future." One thing for sure: the future isn't now. [thanks to jthorner for the link]

Sorry about that. But I spent a good part of today listening to two of my young daughters singing songs carefully selected to rattle around my brain like a marble in a glass jar. It left me with a strange desire to infect others with any piece of music with more hooks than a bridge full of anglers. It's a world of laughter, a world of… Oops! And that TV ad really bothers me– not just because a Vegas-class hypnotist would have trouble extracting the tune from my subconscious. Or the fact that there's no such thing as a free anything. But what really annoys me: the ad's anti-hero bemoans the fact that his failure to check his credit report means that instead of "a cool convertible or an S-U-V," he ends up "driving off the lot in a used sub-compact." I'm thinking this ad is WAY out of whack with the times, as plenty of SUV drivers would dearly love to ditch their gas-guzzlers for a compact car. Unfortunately, depreciation means it's harder to get out of an SUV loan than stop hearing that damn song. 

In today's Cayenne GTS review, we learn that the autobox-equipped porked-out Porker blasts from zero to sixty miles per hour in 6.1 seconds. So what? Aside from the fact that doing so costs about $4 worth of gas, sprinting from rest to five miles over the double nickel is not something you could or indeed should do on a regular basis. More specifically, TTAC does not condone racing for pinks or blowing someone off at a stoplight (as stoplights tend to indicate areas with speed limits well below 60mph). More importantly the sprint stat tells you nothing about general driving pleasure; such as the fact that the Cayenne GTS' befuddled gearbox makes the SUV lousy at smooth in-gear acceleration. While we're at it, what's the point of knowing a 730hp modded Merc's zero to sixty time? So, is it time automotive journalists ditched this shopworn performance metric? Is there a better way to measure a car's accelerative excellence and/or general desirability? Quarter mile? Just kidding.   

Sam Adams Light. Porsche Cayenne GTS. Same deal. Both the American light beer and the German "sport truck" are fundamentally flawed concepts– made palatable by knowledge, passion and invention. Did I say palatable? I meant enjoyable. You can quaff copious quantities of Sam Adams' 124-calorie-per-bottle beverage without thirsting for "real" beer. By the same token, you can drive the snot out of the 405hp GTS without asking your companion "Dude, where's my Boxster?" In both cases, if you didn't know better, you wouldn't, and you wouldn't care. But if you do, will you?

It's kinda hard for me to get my head 'round the fact that anybody reads TTAC. I know that sounds strange. But you've got to remember I started this website with exactly no readers. And for the first couple of years, there wasn't a comments section. These days, I still read every comment. Yup, all of them. So I kinda sorta know TTAC's Best and Brightest are out there, somewhere. But it still freaks me out when the people we write about, like Business Week's David Kiley, comment on our coverage on the site. Our server stats tell me automakers and their camp (and not in the original Batman TV series sense of the word) followers are reading us. But it's different to get actual online under-the-post feedback from the horse's… mouth (sorry David; I couldn't resist). Which reminds me. Will someone, anyone from GM please respond to our [collective] work? The Truth really does set you free. Ask someone who owns one. 

Worldcarfans reports that Nissan's new GT-R has logged the second fastest-ever lap time around the infamous "Green Hell." "GT-R chief test driver Tochio Suzuki [ED: how ironic is that?] completed the famous Nurburgring circuit in Germany in just 7 minutes 29 seconds. According to our records, this puts the GT-R in second place for fastest laps by unmodified production cars just behind the Pagani Zonda F which posted a time of 7 minutes and 27 seconds last November. The time completely destroys the GT-R's previous best lap of 7 minutes 38 seconds achieved last year in slightly damp conditions." Not to mention what it does to the Porsche Turbo's rep; a car that "only" laps the the 'Ring in 7:40. All that said, is it fair to compare the U.S. street legal $70k (without markup) GT-R to a Euro-spec-only $741k (ish) car that barely achieves double digit production numbers? In short, who's your Daddy?

Finance and Commerce reports that it was a close-run thing– 20 to 18. But despite strenuous lobbying by Minnesota's ethanol industry,  the state's finance committee recommended adopting California's controversial car emissions standards. For one year. John Tuma, a lobbyist for the Minnesota Environmental Partnership, was a happy camper. Ish. "[For now,] consumers are going to be paying for vehicles that are not as fuel efficient as they could be so they will be paying more at the gas pump. And [there will be] more global warming pollution for a year. But it puts [standards] in place and that’s a step forward." [The bracket brigade in in da house!] Chris Radatz, director of public policy for the E85 FlexFuel-lovin' Minnesota Farm Bureau, is not so happy with The Gopher State's Clean Car Act. "“We’re depending on a state to set standards that has a whole different infrastructure,” Radatz said, referring to CA's lack of corn juice pumps. To placate the E85 crowd, a last-minute amendment stipulated a [taxpayer-funded] study of how the bill would affect the availability of flex-fuel vehicles. Availability as in sales? You betcha! Look for this legislation to fall on the floor and flop like a fish. 

Running your car on E85 reduces your mpgs up to 26 percent. Common sense tells you the price of E85 must be lower by the equivalent percentage to cost the same as normal gas. It must be lower again to save you money. It behooves the entire ethanol industry– from corn field to pump– to make sure E85 consumers know this fact; once bitten, twice shy. Meanwhile, any media outlet that doesn't mention E85's relative lack of efficiency when covering the retail end of the biz is acting irresponsibly. But a story specifically touting E85 as cheaper than gas without highlighting the fuel economy penalty is entirely reprehensible. To wit, 11alive.com's "Fuel For Under $3 In Metro Atlanta." "'I couldn't believe it,' said [Mike] Hamilton. 'I couldn't believe it they were selling fuel that cheap.' He's one of the lucky ones. Hamilton drives a vehicle that runs on E85 fuel. At the Safa Express BP station on Highway 20 in Lawrenceville, E85 is selling for $2.99 a gallon. Hamilton estimates he saved over $20 with one fill-up." Still, E85 is "not for everyone," as "the majority of cars on the road today won't run on E85." And then, this "Some drivers have complained their gas mileage is down with E85. Not Mike Hamilton. In fact, he's looking for a way to convert his other vehicles so they'll run on the ethanol blend, now that he can find it." He likes it! Mikey likes it! I'm in!